office until Field returned,
when he quickly dispelled the gloom with a promise of revenge, and set
the staff at work to patch up the ruin the envious Wickersham had made.
But they were not permitted to do this in peace, for their enemy,
returning in the dark of night, bombarded the windows of the editorial
rooms with the staves of old ash-barrels he had found conveniently by.

While Wickersham was engaged in this second assault, with windows
smashing to right of them and to left of them, with glass falling all
around them, and the staves of old ash-barrels playing a devil's tattoo
about them, the devoted band of editors, reporters, and copy-readers
worked nobly on. They had confidence in their leader that their hour
would come. Their first duty was to get out the paper. After that they
looked for the deluge.

When Wickersham had expended his last stave and fiercest epithet on the
shattered windows he retired in bad order to his apartments at the St.
James Hotel.

Now began Field's revenge, planned with due deliberation and executed
with malicious thoroughness. He first sent for "'Possum Jim," an aged
and very serious colored man, who worshipped "Mistah Fiel'" because of
the sympathy Eugene never withheld from the dark-skinned children of
the race. "'Possum Jim" spent most of his existence on the same street
corner, waiting for a job, which invariably had to come to him. His
outfit consisted of an express wagon strung together with telegraph
wire, and a nondescript four-footed creature that once bore the
similitude of a horse. Whenever Field had an odd job to be done about
his household he would go out of his way to let "old 'Possum Jim" earn
the quarter--partly to do an act of kindness to "Jim," but chiefly to
tease Mrs. Field by the appearance of the broken-down equipage
lingering in front of their dwelling.

Just before the Tribune went to press, a sergeant of police called on
Field in response to a summons by telephone. After a whispered
conference he left, with a broad smile struggling under his curling
mustache. In company with a number of his staff Field next made the
round of the all-night haunts and gathered to his aid as fine a
collection of bohemian "thoroughbreds" as ever made the revels of Mardi
Gras look like a Sunday-school convention. He installed them at the
resort of a Kentucky gentleman named Jones, opposite the St. James. As
one who was there reports, "The amber milk of the Blue-grass cow flowed